Anne Marie Gaura’s employment agreement with City of DeKalb expires at the end of 2017. That is, it expires unless a resolution presented as a contract “amendment” gets passed by city council on Monday. They’ve placed the item as a resolution to amend the employment agreement on Monday’s council meeting agenda. But it is not…
Let’s discuss right-sizing of City of DeKalb’s workforce
Last night during DeKalb’s budget meeting, the city manager said that DeKalb has 235 employees. She contrasted this with 2007, when she said we had 257 employees. Perhaps she meant full-time equivalent employees (FTEs), but the methodology for those calculations have changed. I do not understand them anymore, so am looking at things in a…
DeKalb’s growth in personnel expenses
There’s another special city council meeting, specifically a budget meeting, set for this evening. It’s apparently a follow-up of what they discussed last week. On Thursday, the council held a joint meeting with the finance advisory committee to outline a proposed 5 percent reduction in city department budgets for fiscal 2018. This equates to nine…
Anatomy of DeKalb’s proposals for a sales tax hike
That’s not a typo in the headline. There are, I believe, two proposals for a sales tax hike of one cent for fiscal 2018. One comes from DeKalb city administrators, the other from the city’s finance advisory committee (FAC). Here’s the proposal staff put into the draft budget: Sales tax for hiring police officers? Sales…
DeKalb, I’ve got your new police officers right here
DeKalb staff are proposing a one-cent rise in the local sales tax in order to meet next fiscal year’s budget beginning January 1, 2018. They’ll tell you this is about street improvements, but they didn’t care about that last year or the year before, so I believe anything promised for streets is a sweetener to…
Chief Lowery doesn’t want you at meetings if you don’t have anything nice to say
DeKalb’s police chief, Eugene Lowery, is so very, very tired of your negativity. Here’s what he said at Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting of council. I want you to hear everyone’s voice. Not the voices of the few that walk up to this podium, and day in and day out, or week in and…
DeKalb may raise taxes, but the structural budget issue remains
DeKalb’s Financial Advisory Committee (FAC) will be recommending that the city council raise the property tax levy by $954,000, and its local (home rule) sales tax by one cent, in the fiscal year starting January 2018. The property tax recommendation was approved by the FAC in early October, and the sales tax during a meeting…
City of DeKalb’s share of county property taxes, not including the latest wish list
If you haven’t heard, the DeKalb is setting a property tax “ceiling” during its regular meeting tonight. This is a legal-beagle advance notification of the highest aggregate amount that DeKalb could possibly ask for when the council sets the levy during its first meeting in December. What a piece of luck, because recently I’ve been…
TIF spending for streets in FY16 did not come anywhere near what DeKalb is claiming
The setup: During the special Committee of the Whole meeting of Monday evening, DeKalb council members were discussing with staff a proposed budget reduction in 2018 for the street improvement program in our two TIF districts, specifically a staff recommendation to cut in half the usual $1 million budgeted for streets in the TIFs. During…
DeKalb’s HR budget is out of control, and now they want to make it even worse
DeKalb’s Human Resources budget growth by fiscal year (rounded): 2014: $164,000 (actual) 2015: $184,000 (actual) 2016: $254,000 (actual) 2017: $456,000 (projected) In FY14, there was one full-time director and one part-timer in HR. Before that, there were some difficult years where HR had only one director, and the assistant city manager helped fill the gaps…